Texting in your campaign donation?

Cell phone carriers are seeking to get approval to let customers make small donations to a political party or candidate via text messages.

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By sending a text message to a specified common short code —a five- or six-digit number often used by marketers to send coupons, sports scores or weather reports to mobile phones — people may soon be able to make small political donations.

CTIA, the wireless industry's main trade association, has asked the Federal Election Commission for approval to collect and deliver donations of around $10 from customers who want to give to a particular federal campaign, POLITICO has learned.

Aggregating small donations from thousands of supporters can add up to big-dollar amounts for campaigns — as Barack Obama found with online donations during the 2008 presidential campaign.

It can also be a bonanza for cell phone carriers, who collect a small fee for each transaction. The most recent example of the market power of cell phone users was the mobile charitable giving in response to the earthquake in Haiti, which raised more than $30 million in January.

Mobile purchasing via text message "started off as vendors selling ringtones and games and moved into the nonprofit fundraising worlds through the Red Cross and others," said David Mason, former FEC chairman who is now senior vice president for compliance services at Aristotle, a political technology company. "Campaigns are relatively late adopters of this technology. it's very typical for them to follow commercial advertisers in using these mobile short codes."

But there are legal and practical questions surrounding mobile contributions that could get in the way.

Text-message donors would be anonymous to the campaigns, with the charge going straight to the donor's cell phone bill. The cell phone carrier would aggregate the donated funds and then deliver to the campaigns. That means it's not possible for campaigns to verify that the money came from an individual rather than from a corporation or a foreign national. Federal election law prohibits donations from non-U.S. citizens and corporations.

Cell phone companies also have to find a way to ensure the mobile donations do not exceed the $50 limit for anonymous donations. If an individual has multiple cell phone accounts or makes multiple $10 donations, it could easily add up to much more than $50.

"Wireless systems aren't built to capture the type of information typically required when soliciting contributions for campaigns and candidates," said Caleb Burns, partner at Wiley Rein who submitted the CTIA's advisory opinion request to the FEC. "This is a situation where long-standing election rules just have not kept up with the technologies that are becoming realities in modern day campaigning."